Launched on April 11, 2013, and drawing its name from President Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign slogan (“Forward”), FWD.us is a pro-Democratorganization founded by thirteen tech-industry leaders to promote the passage of “comprehensive immigration reform” in the United States.

Assserting that America was “built on the ingenuity and drive of immigrants,” FWD calls on Congress and President Obama to “reform the country’s archaic and broken immigration system [in order] to attract innovators and build prosperous neighborhoods with strong families and good jobs.”

In a Washington Postop ed, FWD's leading founder, Facebook chairman Mark Zuckerberg, wrote that his fledgling group's objective was to attract “the most talented and hardest-working people” from around the world and thereby bolster America's “knowledge economy.” “We have a strange immigration policy for a nation of immigrants,” Zuckerberg said of America, which is home to more than 20% of all the immigrants on earth. “And it's a policy unfit for today's world.”

FWD focuses its advocacy efforts chiefly on five immigration-related objectives:

“Provide law enforcement [with] the tools necessary to secure the border.”

“Establish a streamlined process for admitting future workers to ensure that we continue to promote innovation and meet our workforce needs.” Toward this end, FWD calls for modifications to the guest-worker program that would allow an increase in the number of H-1B visas for immigrants trained in specialized fields such as science and engineering.

“Develop a simple and effective employment verification system.”

“Reform the legal immigration system to better strengthen the American economy and American families.”

“Create a pathway to citizenship for immigrants currently living in the United States that do not have legal status.” This is the cornerstone of FWD's immigration plan, given that: (a) nearly 80% of all current illegals are Hispanics (from Mexico and Latin America), who, as a group, tend overwhelmingly to support Democratic candidates and causes; and (b) conferring citizenship on Hispanic illegals will lead, through “family-reunification” and “chain-migration” provisions in immigration-reform legislation, to an influx of at least 30 million additional Hispanic immigrants (and Democratic voters) within a relatively short time.

From its inception, FWD stood firmly behind Senate Bill 744, known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act. Sponsored by the so-called “Gang of Eight” U.S. senators (four Democrats and four Republicans), this bill called for the provision of a path-to-citizenship for most of the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already residing in the United States; an expedited path-to-citizenship for illegals who first entered the U.S. as minors; a doubling of the number of future legal immigrants permitted to enter the U.S. from Mexico; and a continuance of the practice of “birthright citizenship,” whereby American citizenship is automatically granted to babies born in the United States regardless of the parents' legal status.

To make an economic case for legalization and continued high rates of immigration (mostly from Hispanic countries), FWD maintains that “immigrants are critical to our economy,” as evidenced by the fact that “40% of the 2010 Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children.” Citing a report by the Democrat-affiliated Center for American Progress, a highly influential think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, FWD asserts that conferring legal status and citizenship on illegals would quickly inject hundreds of billions of new dollars into the U.S. economy.

FWD has two major headquarters. One, located in Silicon Valley, handles the group's digital, organizing, and membership initiatives. The other, based in Washington DC, focuses on advocacy, research, and communication efforts.

Though FWD describes its 13 co-founders as a “bi-partisan” alliance, their political allegiances in fact lean heavily, though not entirely, toward Democrats. In addition to Mark Zuckerberg, the organization's co-founders include:

Dropbox founder Drew Houston, who has supported exclusively Democratic candidates (including Barack Obama) as well as Democratic Party organs in more than 10 states; and

Founders Fund managing partner Sean Parker, who likewise has contributed exclusively to Democratic candidates—including Barack Obama and Harry Reid—as well as Democratic Party organs in at least a dozen states.

The four remaining FWD founders have little to no history of political partisanship in either direction. These include

According to Mark Zuckerberg, FWD promotes its immigration-related agendas through the use of both “online and offline advocacy tools.” To maximize the effectiveness of these efforts, FWD in April 2013 established two subsidiary organizations—Americans for a Conservative Direction and the Council for American Job Growth. The former seeks to appeal to conservative and Republican voters, while the latter targets a liberal/left constituency. Said FWD spokeswoman Kate Hansen: “Maintaining two separate entities … to support elected officials across the political spectrum—separately—means that we can more effectively communicate with targeted audiences of their constituents.”

Apart from immigration, a secondary issue of concern to FWD is “education reform” aimed at “produc[ing] more graduates in the science, technology and math fields.” FWD is located online and offline: